


Drabbles - Buffy

by lycomingst



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lycomingst/pseuds/lycomingst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a collection of unrelated drabbles featuring Buffy. Most were written for the "Open on Sunday" LJ community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drabbles - Buffy

**Thoughts**

Run, Run. Run.

Away from the light. There's a dark place. Go there. Stay quiet.

Noise. Shadows. Coming closer. Run.

Too much light. Nothing to hold on to. Crushing things everywhere. Noise. Light.

There. A hole. Jump down. Hold on tight. Breathe. Be quiet now.

And run again. Not safe yet. Somewhere darker. All dark place is better.

I smell it. It's near. A good place. I see it.

The furtherest corner. The deepest shadow. Be still now. Wait.

Hungry. Very hungry. Want to eat. Something. Cheese.

(SWOOSH)

Buffy stood up, her arms folded over her naked chest.

"Hi, Oz."

 

**Absence**

Buffy lay motionless in bed. Because moving made every muscle ache. What would it hurt if she skipped school today? Mom could write her a note.

_Please excuse my daughter's absence from school. She was up until all hours destroying demons, staking vampires, and generally making the world safe. I've talked to her about managing her time better and she won't be missing any more days._

Or,

_Please excuse Buffy Summer's absences. She believes the Mayor is trying to kill her. She would rather not come out of her bedroom._

Really, not going to happen.

Up and at 'em, Slayer.

 

**Afterglow**

Sometimes, after it's over, and I 'm thinking again that it shouldn't have happened and won't happen again, he pretends to breathe. I guess he thinks that makes it seem more normal to me. Us being together. His chest goes up and down, and his breath tickles my ear. But it smells like blood, which he swears is never human now, and cigarettes and whichever whiskey he can afford or can steal. We lie there, usually without speaking.

Then I go home. Or we start up again, and he forgets to breath.

But the breathing's a nice gesture, I guess.

 

**Buffy**

I've seen the Pacific again, after all these years. Once it was about the beach, sun-bathing, flirting. Now I dig my toes in the sand and shade my eyes against the sun and think about destiny.

We're alike, the ocean and me. How could it do other than what it does? The sea will surge, its waves lapping or pounding the shore, throughout time, because it must. That is its nature. A chosen Slayer can understand the way things must be.

The sand and the water were the same; life and age bring a different way of looking at them.

 

**Glass Slipper**

The kids, at last, put to bed, she was sitting with her nightcap, letting her mind wander. She thought about some of the fairytales she had read to them.

It struck her that it was Cinderella's prince she identified with. That most women could see themselves in. She had carried that glass slipper that was her love around. Trying to have it fit one man, then another. First Angel, next Riley, Spike. Then a few others. To slip it on him, and dance away.

She pictured her husband in glass slippers.

Being tired and drinking tea always made her fanciful.

 

**Thoughts**

He lies on top of me. He isn't as heavy as you'd think. Maybe a vampire's bones are hollow like a bird's.

He's a dead weight, when you come to think about it, but still lighter than Riley. Riley was always so careful. He thought because he was so tall and muscled that I'd be overwhelmed. It was another way he didn't understand about a Slayer, about me.

It wouldn't occur to Spike to hold back. He trusts me to meet him, to match his passion. I always do. The only lies I tell are the ones outside this room.

 

**In The Past**

Buffy was rummaging through the closet. Not looking for but finding a box with her mother's make-up. Clothes had been given away. But these things held the scent of Joyce and, though useless, had been not discarded.

She picked out the lipstick called "Harlot". Reminding her of a ...joke? Moment? Memory? When Buffy was being a bit too much of the Slayer at home, Joyce would say, "I think that attitude could use a little lipstick. Faith always liked 'Harlot' Shall I get it for you, dear?"

And Buffy would be abashed, because a Slayer is still only a daughter.

 

**In the Rain**

She never knew it like this. All her life in California, preparing for winter meant someone saying, _maybe you should bring a jacket_.

Now the cold collects in her joints. And the air is always damp. She has wool scarves.

She remembers a line from a poem half memorized in French class. _Il pleuvait sans cesse ..._ . You think that with all the prophecies and portents floating around the Hellmouth, somebody would have told her she'd be better off studying Italian.

Yes, she should learn to say, _ it rained without stopping_ in the local language. It'd be useful.

 

**Rue de la Paix**

They met in a Paris street, quite by accident. He'd brought his son to show him the sights, or what could be seen after sunset. Buffy hadn't known until then that he had a son.

They had dinner together. They talked about Darla, his mother. She watched as father and son shared jokes, correcting each other's stories. She noticed that Connor had the same straighten- his- shoulders gesture as his father.

She left too soon, lying about a headache. She lay sleepless in her room that night, thinking on the future.

His child. Maybe someday, her child. Never their child.

 

**The Locket**

When Buffy was packing to move back to the States, she came across a heart locket Angel had given her. She sighed when she thought of how many years ago it was.

She opened it, but it was empty. She hadn't asked Angel for his picture to put in it. She couldn't remember why. Was it some apocalypse that distracted her? Was it before or after she sent him to hell that he gave it to her? Everything blurred together.

Well, it would be a meaningless memento. Every time she saw Angel he looked exactly like he did in Sunnyvale.

 

**Gone**

The first wave of grief for my mother wore off, but the missing her deepened. She was everywhere in the house, except she wasn't. Only me and Dawn.

In the back of my mind, a voice said that it wasn't fair. I'd given up so much of a "normal" life. I was the Slayer. Nothing in my life was like anybody else's. Weren't there going to any rewards for the separate, lonely life I was called to live?

Why was this ordinary way of things allowed to happen?

I expected to be spared this.

I expected to die before her.

 

**Things Past**

To get his Scooby gang out of his hair for a while, Giles told them about the walking tours.

Dickens, Shakespeare, Regency London, what did they want to know about? They settled on the old pub tour, beer tasting in places that hadn't changed in 80, 100 years.

Sitting in one, Buffy's thoughts were of old lovers. Had they been here long ago? If Spike were with her, would he whisper of narrow escapes, half smile on his lips? Would Angel tell of sad hours and break her heart?

Where was she going to go, that they hadn't been before?


End file.
